Their dinner had been cloudy tea and the whole box of lady-fingers while the rain had poured outside.

This set a precedent for a hot, sweet evening despite the weather.

Now they were wrapped around each other, their limbs slowly migrating into more comfortable positions as sleep began to impede their vision.

The blankets of Sherlock's bed had begun the evening in a mountain of fabric as snowy-white and dense and pillowy as a dollop of Devonshire cream, had spent most of the time during the evening ignored at the foot of the bed (until they dripped off onto the floor), and had now been appropriated to their highest purpose and were being drawn inch by inch, tug by tug, closer around the boys' shoulders.

All in all, it was a good evening, John thought, and he'd prevented them both from succumbing to the irritations that a foul day could breed even in the hearts of two people who loved each other.

Especially two people who were as easily bored as they.

Now they lay in bed, and John held his breath as he listened to the paltry, paltry, paltry noise of the rain, held at a distance by the staid, darkened complexion of the demure, foggy window.

As he listened to the raspy, raspy, raspy sound of Sherlock's breathing, as unpredictable and irregular as the sound of wind in a seashell, irregular perhaps just because Sherlock knew he was listening and liked to confuse John, to make John believe that even his breathing was unconventional, to confirm to John that he was a consistent believer in the idea that breathing was boring, to delight John because John liked to believe that Sherlock was extraordinary in every way.

As he listened to the flick, flick, flick of their coronary valves opening and closing, opening and closing, opening and closing, pumping blood through and regulating the flow and working as flawlessly and naturally and uninspiredly and dutifully as policemen moderating traffic at the streetcorner.

As he listened to the tiny, tiny, tiny scratchy sounds that Sherlock's fluttering eyelashes made on John's pillow, probably unconscious involuntary spasms of movement that indicated Sherlock's attempts to fight sleep and relish the closeness that they were sharing, closeness that was so new and beautiful and exciting and crystalline and delicious.

"Sherlock?"

John felt that his hoarse whisper, emerging from his bosom like a rumble from the heart of the earth, tore the gentle, heavy silence like an industrial meatgrinder taken to the black velvet train of the Queen of the Night. But Sherlock didn't respond as though he'd heard, so perhaps the eyelash batting wasn't from some purposeful effort to stay awake but from rapid eye movement as the great detective descended to a rare state of deep sleep.

John breathed a trembling, meaningful, longing, appreciative sigh that turned slightly into a belch, which made him smile because of the universe's inherent good-humor, never letting him take beautiful things like Sherlock too seriously.

In response, as a reward for not getting irritated at the realities of his body and accepting his status as an imperfect human being, the universe gave him a gentle second gift - Sherlock's body shifted, his head filling the gap between John's chin and chest, cheekbones nestling patiently against John's neck.

It was John's favorite place for Sherlock to be, because it seemed to confirm to him physically that there was some part of Sherlock that remembered and believed what John had said so many years ago - friends protect people.

Sherlock's being there, in that particular space, touching John in that particular way, made John feel so strong, so needed, so protective, so trusted, so desired, so loved, and yet so inadequate.

So, so, so human.

And it humanized Sherlock, too, to be there - his expression was one he would never have with his eyes open, an unconscious humility, an acceptance of all that John could understand that Sherlock could not, a request for help in the journey of developing as a human being, a submission to the whims of the universe.

Sherlock was at once glorious and frail, mythic and childlike, victorious and supportive, beautiful and awed by beauty.

He was a living paradox when he was awake, but sleeping he transcended the polar reality in which paradoxes exist and, in this transcendence, became everything and anything, no longer paradoxical but impossible to locate at any place on a spectrum because he was the spectrum in its entirety.

Even his body refused to be put into any category and insisted on being all categories.

His breathing, in its irregularity, had the consistency of violinists in an orchestra sustaining a single note for a very long time, each individual member varying his bowing so that not one of them had the same moment where they changed from up to down or down to up.

His eyelashes, in their flickering, had the effect of implying wakefulness while in the depths of unwakefulness, as gentle and subtle a dance between presence and unpresence of spirit and consciousness as the jagged glowing of fireflies in the twilight of a summer afternoon.

His heart's noise, in its steadfastness, had the ambiguousness of a tribal drumbeat, as steady and ever-present and unchanging and natural a tempo no matter if it was thumping at a funeral, a wedding celebration, or just in bed with John.

But all gifts from the universe have unexpected components – and the most relevant component now, John was beginning to realize, was that with the beauty of the symphony that was the sounds and feelings of Sherlock being so close, he was too overwhelmed to sleep.

Indeed, he was nearly breathless, daring scarcely to allow his fingers entrance to the forest that was Sherlock's rich, sweet-smelling hair, no matter how enticing it was as it gently glided a few millimeters across the underside of his chin with Sherlock's every breath.

Moreover, as wonderful as the flicking of Sherlock's beautiful eyelashes across the starched pillow was to listen to, it was getting to be like a paintbrush being jerked across a snare drum - soft, but just a little too noisy and unusual to let John submerge into the Morphean realms.

He was doing his best to ignore it, but perhaps the slight irritation he felt changed something about his body's chemical scent, and suddenly he felt and heard Sherlock's eyelashes flick open more purposefully than before.

"John?"

Chagrin at having disturbed the sleeping dove made John stay silent.

"Awake?"

John still didn't say anything.

"You're not able to sleep."

"Not really," whispered John in return. "It's all right though."

"You were listening."

John's smile was the one that usually accompanied his shrugs, but he specifically didn't let his shoulder make the movement to prevent Sherlock from slipping off his shoulder.

Well, no, there was a twitch of muscle nonetheless, but Sherlock glued himself to John like a limpet, his chin digging into a place that John was vaguely aware of being an acupressure point. It was a bit painful, but nice.

"Have you diagnosed me with gastrointestinal disorder?" asked Sherlock, and the difference between what Sherlock imagined John was listening to and the reality of what John was listening to was so vast that John couldn't help but laugh.

Not too heartily, though; it would be like sirens wailing down the street to laugh too loudly in that sacred space.

"No, congestive heart failure." He paused, realizing that was a rather horrible joke. "Thirty years away. Fifty if you start taking care of yourself."

"God. I suppose you'll be telling me I need to get a flu shot, next."

"No, but are your tetanus shots up to date?"

(A tense silence confirmed the worst.)

"Of course not. Silly question. First thing tomorrow, Sherlock. Doctor's orders. You can even administer boosters to me first, if you like; heaven knows, I go wherever you go, and am just as likely to crawl over a rusty nail exploring some musty basement somewhere."

"Fine. But when's the last time we were crawling anywhere but a bed, John?"

John took this pouty reply in stride.

"Never say never, Mr. Sherlock Holmes."

"I didn't say never," returned Sherlock, but his argument was becoming more and more silly as sleep addled his ability to formulate ideas. "Good night."

John kissed his partner on the cheek, patted him on the shoulder with a cheerful, "Goodnight yourself!" and closed his own eyes against the violet darkness, a darkness that was lightened only by Sherlock's alabaster skin and the whispering brightness of the moon through the smokey window.

Whether Sherlock's eyelashes would continue to flutter like moth wings in the night, John wouldn't know - for he succumbed to sleep, finally, as it draped its silken sheet over both the detective and the doctor.